This winter will see the release of Russell Crowe’s highly-anticipated directorial debut, The Water Diviner, which began shooting last December.
Crowe is also starring in the film alongside Olga Kurylenko (known widely for her more prominent roles in films such as Quantum of Solace, Hitman and Oblivion) as well as rising star Jai Courtney (of Jack Reacher and A Good Day To Die Hard fame).
The Water Diviner, which is written by Melbourne writers Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight, focuses on the story of an Australian farmer called Connor (Russell Crowe) who, in 1919, sets out on a journey to find and bring home the bodies of his three missing sons, four years after they were reportedly killed during the Battle of Gallipoli.
For those who don’t know, the Battle of Gallipoli was a failed offensive by the Allies which took place in the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. The plan was to gain a strategic advantage by overtaking Constantinople which, at the time, was the capital of the Ottoman Empire (which would later dissolve and become known as Turkey), but ultimately the plan failed and at great cost to human life. Perhaps the most famous depiction of this was shown in the 1981 movie Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir and starring a young Mel Gibson.
Crowe explains in the following featurette about The Water Diviner that the inspiration for the story came about when Anastasios was researching something for a completely different project altogether and came across a letter from man called Cyril Hughes of the Imperial War Graves Unit, which simply stated “One old chap managed to get here from Australia, looking for his son’s grave…” Crowe also emphasises that the script which was born from this entry helped him to understand much more about the loss of Turkish soldiers during the devastating events of Gallipoli, which will become a major focus throughout the course of the film.
Crowe is also starring in the film alongside Olga Kurylenko (known widely for her more prominent roles in films such as Quantum of Solace, Hitman and Oblivion) as well as rising star Jai Courtney (of Jack Reacher and A Good Day To Die Hard fame).
The Water Diviner, which is written by Melbourne writers Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight, focuses on the story of an Australian farmer called Connor (Russell Crowe) who, in 1919, sets out on a journey to find and bring home the bodies of his three missing sons, four years after they were reportedly killed during the Battle of Gallipoli.
For those who don’t know, the Battle of Gallipoli was a failed offensive by the Allies which took place in the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. The plan was to gain a strategic advantage by overtaking Constantinople which, at the time, was the capital of the Ottoman Empire (which would later dissolve and become known as Turkey), but ultimately the plan failed and at great cost to human life. Perhaps the most famous depiction of this was shown in the 1981 movie Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir and starring a young Mel Gibson.
Crowe explains in the following featurette about The Water Diviner that the inspiration for the story came about when Anastasios was researching something for a completely different project altogether and came across a letter from man called Cyril Hughes of the Imperial War Graves Unit, which simply stated “One old chap managed to get here from Australia, looking for his son’s grave…” Crowe also emphasises that the script which was born from this entry helped him to understand much more about the loss of Turkish soldiers during the devastating events of Gallipoli, which will become a major focus throughout the course of the film.
RSS Feed
